Morris Pearl - Tax the Rich!

Also by Morris Pearl

How to Think like a Patriotic Millionaire: Taxes

Also by Erica Payne

The Practical Progressive: How to Build a Twenty-First-Century Political Movement

How Lies, Loopholes, and Lobbyists Make the Rich Even Richer

By Morris Pearl, Erica Payne, and the Patriotic Millionaires

A Note from Morris Pearl

Dear Reader,

An article in the New Yorker a while back described a bunch of millionaires and billionaires building luxury bomb shelters on private islands in anticipation of some sort of apocalyptic scenariohigh-end sanctuaries for the end of days. It made me angry and kind of sad too. These people are willing to pay millions to live through the collapse of society in comfort, but how many of them have spent millionsor any amount, for that matterto change the dynamics that caused the threat in the first place? How many of those millionaires are willing to admit that they helped create or worsen the societal conditions that are causing their fear? Do any of them understand that much ofeven most ofwhat is happening today is their fault?

A single days worth of headlines can be enough to give even the most optimistic person doubt that we can find our way forward. All is not lost, but we do have some serious work to do. And its abundantly clear that its going to be much, much harder to do that work if my fellow millionaires and billionaires dont become part of the solution, or at least stop making all the problems we have worse.

I wrote this book in part to challenge my fellow millionaires to get their heads out of the sand. You are destroying the country, our country, my country. All of us, including us rich people, are going to end up paying the price unless we change course. Now.

Ive got a messagea warning, reallyfor my fellow rich people, both in the United States and around the world. You cannot continue to sit by and enjoy your riches while the rest of the world falls further into poverty and chaos. We have seen the results of gross inequality over and over again. Reread your history books. Dysfunctional societies dont end well for rich people either.

I remember thinking about this years ago when I saw Les Misrables and heard the lines:

With all the anger in the land

How long before the judgment day?

Before we cut the fat ones down to size?

Before the barricades arise?

The play is set in Paris in the 1830s during what was known as the Second French Revolution, but it could have been set in Russia in 1917 or South Africa in the 1980s. Or America today.

History is riddled with examples of what happens when too many have too little and too few have too much. Im not talking about a stock-market crash; Im talking about a revolution. Americas millionaires should know that during the 2016 election, 81% of Trump supporters and 79% of Bernie Sanders supporters said the country needed a political revolution. Righteous anger is clearly not partisan.

Nick Hanauer, another millionaire deeply concerned about the state of things, sounded the alarm in a Politico piece titled The Pitchforks Are Coming For Us Plutocrats. He got it mostly right. But it wont be pitchforks. U.S. civilians own more than 393 million guns, 120 guns for every one hundred residents.

I want to ask my fellow millionaires, Do you really think you can protect yourself from mobs of angry, hungry people? So did King Louis XVI and Czar Nicholas II. You may believe that this time it will be different. You may think that your fancy little bunker will protect you. And perhaps you will be proven right. But I wouldnt count on the walls holding the world out forever, particularly when you live in a country with more guns than people.

To be clear, I dont feel guilty about being rich. I like being rich. I would recommend it to anyone. And I dont consider myself any more altruistic than the next person. Im just as greedy as every other rich person I know. Im just greedy for a different kind of country than a lot of other rich people are.

Im greedy for a country with a basic sense of fairness for my family and me to live in. Im greedy for a country where good businesses thrive and hard work is valued and fairly compensated. Where people feel safe in their neighborhoods. Where parents can tell their children that theyre going to be okay and really believe it. I want to live in a country with lots of rich people and a huge middle class, and I happen to believe that lessening inequality by taxing rich people is the only way to create that kind of country.

Taxing our richest citizens is not the only thing we have to do, of course, but it is not optional. Think of it as entirely necessary, if not entirely sufficient. So I plan to do everything I can to ensure we tax people like me as substantially and effectively as possible. Because I dont want to be a rich man in a poor country. Its just that simple. I dont want to live in a country with a few extraordinarily wealthy people and millions of poor people. And before you ask, no, I dont want to live there even if I happen to be one of the very rich people. I dont want to live behind barbed-wire fences. I dont want to ride around town in a bulletproof car with a trained security guard. I dont want to worry that my children or grandchildren are going to get kidnapped, or worse.

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My daughter-in-law is Peruvian, and since she and my son met, my family and I have spent a lot of time in Peru. Its beautiful, but its also profoundly disturbing to see its people struggle through deep, desperate poverty while the elites huddle with their wealth behind barbed-wire fences. I dont want to live in a country like that, but thats where were heading.

Theres a Greek proverb that goes, A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in. Lately, the old men running our country havent been planting trees; theyve been cutting them down to make room for private golf courses. And, yes, sadly, it is still mostly men.

We can fix the problem, or at least get a really good start on fixing it, relatively easily. It will take some time and money, but the solutions are fairly straightforward. And I, personally, would rather fix things than retreat into a gated community with a private security force while the world outside the gates falls apart.

Luckily, Im not alone. Ten years ago, with a few dozen other millionaires, I signed an open letter to Americas leaders to protest the extension of the Bush tax cuts for people like us with incomes of over $1 million a year and/or assets of at least $5 million. Since then, this group of Patriotic Millionaires has grown to over two hundred people from thirty-three states. Now, keep in mind, there are about 500,000 people in the United States who make more than a million dollars a year, so we have some work to do on our recruiting, but its a start.